Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist whose experimentalism and creativity reshaped the landscape of 20th-century art. Rauschenberg blended Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, as well as challenging the traditional distinctions between painting, sculpture, photography, and performance.

Rauschenberg was born in 1925 in Texas, and grew up in a working-class family in a conservative area. After serving in the Navy during World War II, the GI Bill allowed him to attend college for free. Creative culture in the U.S. was expanding at the time, offering new career opportunities in advertising, graphic design, and more. Rauschenberg–along with others like Al Held and Cy Twombly–took advantage of the GI bill to atttend art school. Rauschenberg enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute, the same school as Jack Lemon of Landfall Press would later attend.

After the Kansas City Art Institute, Rauschenberg attended the Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Black Mountain College was an incredible if short-lived educational experiment where fellow students and artists including John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Josef Albers, and Ruth Asawa enriched Rauschenberg‘s trajectory.